Another Empire
by limber
Summary: 2005 -- When everything else has changed, sometimes you cling to the one thing that's stayed the same.
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: All characters involved are the property of Bad Robot, etc.  
  
Archives: Please ask before archiving. The email's in the profile.  
  
This room has robbed him of his self-possession. Before, he reminded me of a boy king; idle but powerful, every move languid and assured. But the way he moves now causes my gut to twist - he's no longer at leisure, and there's an opportunistic sheen to him. He's become more serpentine, his eyes glitter at me sharply, and I need to steel myself to continue.  
  
Because this is the only option I have, or it's the only option I want.  
  
It's hard to describe the feeling that someone is studying you so deeply, so adeptly, that you are completely laid bare before them. I can't complain without sounding like a child, because he's not made a move to threaten me - but his eyes flicker in a stone-still face, and I know that he knows everything.  
  
Stop staring at me.  
  
I watch him gracefully push away from the wall and pace towards the glass divider, a predatory movement, and I steel myself against stepping away. This little glass box has made him more deadly, more calculated, more of everything I know to fear. A distillation chamber of sorts, to craft the perfect sociopath.  
  
Does this room make everyone into my mother?  
  
"I'd offer you a chair, but..." He lets the sentence trail off, a throwaway phrase. He doesn't seem surprised to see me, but his cheeks flush a little and his pulse flutters at his throat. I'm not vain enough to think that I appeal to him in my current state, but I recognize the signs - he sees a game starting, and he can't wait to play it.  
  
"Sark, I need to know where Irina is." He doesn't react to my question, doesn't even seem to take it in.  
  
His mouth hitches slightly at the corner, too little to class as a smirk or grin. He's still studying, gaze raking over me. I resist the urge to pull my sweater closer, painfully conscious of the atrophied state of my muscles, the pallor of my skin. Maybe the fluorescents down in this cave will mask it a little.  
  
"You're not well."  
  
Maybe not.  
  
But I realize I'm too tired to play this guarded game with him. If he wants something out of me, he'll most likely get it sooner or later. And I'm tired, so tired. The kind that seeps through my bones and makes my chest and throat ache - as though my body wants to cry until I'm too exhausted to stay conscious. And so I let my shoulder fall against the glass divider and my body to slide against it, down, down until I'm huddled on the cement floor, the cool window against my temple. It feels good to fall.  
  
He's silent as he watches me crumple, and I don't bother to watch his face - there aren't likely to be any emotions there, either. He stays where he stands, hands idly clasped behind his back, and observes.  
  
"Sark." My voice is weary. "I need to find my mother."  
  
"You've been missing." He's speaking to himself a little, though still looking at me. "No one knew where you were. I know that."  
  
"Sark, everyone knows that." I tip my head sideways, but it puts a crick in my neck. "Stop being cryptic, I'll tell you whatever you want to know, just..." My voice is slightly petulant, but I honestly couldn't care less. "Sit down over here, where I can see you."  
  
He's never had the abrupt movements of other men, and this is no exception. Fluidly, he comes to the divide about ten feet away from me and settles his back against it, so I can see him in profile through the glass. It's like pressing my nose against the windows at the aquarium, and I resist the urge to tap. He doesn't look at me.  
  
"They don't like me this close, Agent Bristow."  
  
"I blitzed the cameras, they'll never know." Oh, that's familiar - the tiny intake of breath, the mask of calculation that settles over his face. But it's all meaningless, and I'm numb. He'll find out soon enough that there's no need for plotting.  
  
I say, "Now, since you're not going to answer anything I ask - what do you want to know?"  
  
He does smile a bit at that, some of his old wry humor peeking through. "To be frank, I'm unaccustomed to asking the questions - I may be slightly rusty. Where were you?"  
  
It's easier answering than asking, I find. It's the method that worked best with Kendall, with Will. Just let them ask and ask and ask. Besides, all of my questions are two years behind. "I don't know. Hong Kong, at least, but other than that, nothing."  
  
He takes this in seamlessly, beginning to warm to the role of questioner. "When did you get back?"  
  
"A week and a half ago."  
  
"What has changed?"  
  
The question is loaded, but so simple to answer. "Everything." Friends, family, body, home, world, mind... "Everything."  
  
I'm suddenly aware that he's looking straight at me, and a glimmer of something unidentifiable in his expression. He simply says, "Then it seems we are in much the same situation."  
  
I stare right back at him. "I know."  
  
This might be the first moment that he actually realizes what I intend to do. His every tendon has tightened, he's tense and ready and expectant. I wonder what's worse: to wake up from a two-year sleep and find the world has gone on without you, or to be aware the entire time that the world's whipping past and being unable to catch hold of it in any way?  
  
We both rise wordlessly, mirroring each other through the divide. He draws level with me by the time we reach the cell door, and he watches closely as I remove a keycard from my pocket. The wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly; they thought to change the password, but never suspected that I'd accessed every blueprint, every technical spec, while my mother was the cell's inhabitant. So I'm finally able to slide my makeshift key into the slot - a key I once daydreamed would release my mother, and today...  
  
He has me up against the wall within seconds, his forearm thrust sharply against my windpipe, another positioned against my sternum. He could break my ribs and drive them through my heart, I'd never have the time or strength to fight him. I know this. So does he.  
  
"You killed Allison Doren." He's not angry, though. He's detached and dry, and I think my absolute lack of fear disturbs him. My body is pliant under his grasp, accepting the bruising force with complete disregard. I'm not being brave - I just couldn't care less about losing a life that's not even mine.  
  
"She was trying to kill me." I push my neck against his arm briefly, and he lets me take a breath. "You killed Francie Calfo. She was a chef."  
  
"Yes." And at that, the moment abruptly ends. He drops his arms and steps back, leaving me to cough. He waits for me to recover from his attack, patient but unapologetic. I certainly can't trust him, but he's the only thing that makes sense right now, and I'll take what I can get.  
  
I takes a matter of moments for him to skin out of his CIA issue and into the few items I was able to scrounge from the debris of my former life: Will's sweater, Vaughn's jeans, all mistakenly packed away in the haste following my death. I've washed everything five times, utterly destroying the last hint of their owners' scents. When I turn back from the camera I'm carefully looping, Sark is busying himself by arranging his old clothes into a body-shaped form on his bunk.  
  
The clothes are good on him, hanging in completely different patterns than they did on Will and Vaughn. Unfamiliar. Good. He turns to me, and the same wordless communication flows between us. I hand him a baseball cap, he shoulders the bag I brought in with me as I clip a Visitor's Pass to his pocket.  
  
A few whispered instructions are all that is needed before we hit the main offices, and he unerringly makes his way towards the access tunnel I used three years ago, now out of operation. The hallways are practically empty this early in the morning, and I see very few people. Some I know, some I don't - all smile hesitantly at me. I nod - no point in disguising my presence. Once Sark's drugged guards wake up, it will be perfectly clear as to who provided them with sedative-laced coffee.  
  
I take the more conventional route and leave through the front door, nodding to the night staff on the desk. Walter, who I have known since I joined, winks at me cheerfully and I wave, my hand cutting him off in my field of vision.  
  
I cannot think that I'm leaving anyone behind.  
  
Our rendez-vous point is twenty minutes away. Once I would have jogged the distance, which would have given my mind the time to sort out the confusing crush of emotions that have suddenly risen up within me. But as I slide into the rental car, I can't help but to feel a little panicked.  
  
This is not like me, I think as I drive. It is reckless, dangerous, puts others at risk, will cause others pain. I am kind, I am emotional, I am protective and good.  
  
But, I remind myself, I am dead.  
  
The uncertainty falls away, like water slicking off a stone. I feel light, unbound and undestined. There is every chance that I've loosed a killer back upon the world, every chance that he has taken his freedom and run with it.  
  
But I'm banking on the fact that he, too, feels hollow and lost. I don't know why I've reached out to him like this, but I feel shipwrecked. I'd've liked to have been shipwrecked, rather than this.  
  
I drive up to the phone booth, and I'm pleased when he swiftly opens the car door, settles himself next to me. The rain has drenched the shoulders of his sweater, and as we drive, the damp smell of him fills the car.  
  
The world whips silently by, but it's not our world anymore, and we don't know it.  
  
tbc 


	2. Chapter 2

*  
  
We don't stop moving until London.  
  
He assures me that it's the best place for intel - I'm a little less than comfortable about sliding from the States into what is essentially the States' pocket, and the articles I read on the flight over do nothing to dispel that concern.  
  
The world has gone insane, I think. My years of tactical training and political study are unaffected by my fugue, and I comb through the pages of newsprint in disbelief. Situations that should have remained covert are blasted across headlines, the Geneva Convention ignored; I try to see advantage for one side or the other, but there's nothing there.  
  
I'm reminded of the King Solomon parable, and how he threatened to cut a baby in half to satisfy the two women claiming to be its mother. The parallel is imperfect, though - neither side seems to realize that, through such relentless fighting, they're ripping the future apart. There is no Solomon to judge the contest.  
  
The world is being spun by fools.  
  
For a moment, I'm tempted to mention my analogy to Sark, and I turn to him. But he is just as engrossed as I am, and the look on his face is different - where I see tragedy, he sees opportunity. His eyes dart from page to page in an assessing manner, as though he's already figuring how to play one faction off the other.  
  
Far from feeling horrified, I'm relieved. Even in this new world, some things haven't changed.  
  
We don't bother talking. There's too much to ingest, and neither of us like going at things half-informed. And so we read, observe. I memorize the currency exchanges at the airport while Sark accesses the State Department's travel advisory. People rush by us, embracing and crying, and my stomach plummets for a moment, because that's what a homecoming should be like.  
  
Even if you didn't know you were gone in the first place, that's how love reacts. Or at least I thought.  
  
The hotel is on the outskirts of London, eight miles out from the river, a place where neither of us has been before. It's a small hotel, a converted mews house, and we register as a couple. The landlady chatters about visiting Marx's grave and the quaint village streets nearby, but she falls silent at Sark's impassive expression. I force a look of interest and take the key, and she gives me a confused and wavering smile.  
  
What must she think of me, having married such a cold, cold man.  
  
We've been awake for over forty-eight hours, and it shows. I collapse into the small armchair beside the window as he looks around the room, his fingers lightly tracing the tops of doors, the insides of lampshades. When I move to join the search, he looks at me and shakes his head slightly. Selfishly, I am relieved.  
  
I am embarrassed and irritated by my own lack of stamina, but Sark hasn't once mentioned the change. At one point, I remember he made me eat an enormous sandwich, and since arriving in England he's been fetching me cups of tea. He doesn't do it solicitously, just brings me a cup when he gets one for himself. He takes two sips of each cup, then leaves it to go cold.  
  
He thinks I'm too worn out to notice.  
  
I notice.  
  
*  
  
As a teenager, I dreamt of situations like this.  
  
I fantasized for weeks about a Spanish class trip to Mexico. These were not daydreams to speak of to girlfriends - these were intensely private scenarios, the kind written in diaries and seen on movie screens. A boy and a girl, all but strangers, forced to share close quarters. The tension would be delicious as we tried not to invade each others' space, as we changed into nightclothes with averted eyes, as he gallantly offered the bed to me and I brazenly refused (after all, there was only one blanket, and the bed would be big enough for two). And then we would climb into bed together, at first hugging the opposite sides of the bed, but eventually meeting in the middle, all soft skin and tentative touches. And maybe then we'd kiss.  
  
Well, I was thirteen. I didn't know how to imagine the other stuff.  
  
I suddenly jerk awake and realize that all the lights are out in the room, save one. Sark is sitting up in bed, poring over some sort of manuscript. I've fallen asleep in an odd position - my left arm and shoulder are sore and painful, and as I straighten up, I gasp. Sark ignores it, and I'm grateful.  
  
"How long?"  
  
His eyes never leave his papers. "About two hours - it's nine o'clock."  
  
My shoulder twinges again. "Okay." Groggily, I scoop up the duty free bag from the airport and make my way into the bathroom, closing the door behind me.  
  
I hadn't been taking very good care of myself before starting this adventure, and the woman who stares back at me in the mirror is barely recognizable. The mind plays strange tricks; no matter how many times I try to correct it, my memory insists that I look the same as I did on my graduation day. So the shock of this dull-skinned, pale, sunken stranger strikes me again every time.  
  
I don't really like mirrors anymore.  
  
The shower isn't as hot as I'd like, but it's fierce, pounding on my shoulder until the muscles finally give up their frozen state. I've become slightly obsessed with scented shampoos, and this one is no different - the odor seems to impregnate every last molecule of the steamy air, and the delicious sensation of being wrapped in something warm and gentle almost sends me to sleep. Only the sudden end to the hot water drives me from the shower, fully awake once more.  
  
Sark's still awake, but brooding. He's found a pen and paper somewhere, and his hand flies across the page, sketching out elaborate diagrams. I watch dozily from the chair in the corner, trying to coax my hair to dry in the autumn breeze that comes in the window. Occasionally his pen strikes out in a violent motion, scoring out a symbol that must represent some ally or enemy. Every once in a while he glances up and watches my hair as I comb my fingers through it, once, again, again. It seems to relax him as much as it does me.  
  
When my hair won't soak the pillow, I finally get into bed. The shirt and shorts from the airport crackle stiffly as I shift under the covers, giving off the chemical smell of New Clothes. I don't bother edging to the side of the bed in exaggerated politesse - we will split this space evenly, as we have all others.  
  
"You didn't tell me about Jack."  
  
That comes out of nowhere, like a sharp slap, and my pleasant languor ebbs away.  
  
"No. I thought you'd know." I don't like the brittleness in my own voice. I don't want him to push the issue.  
  
"I didn't." No movement of his is without import; at this precise moment, he leans across me and places a mobile phone on the bedside table. I don't know where he got it. I don't want to know.  
  
There is every possibility that his sources know more than the CIA about my father, but I don't ask. I can't. Because the CIA know that my father is dead, and they have the body. Any information Sark has collected will only shed light on a time that I need to stay in the dark.  
  
I lie on my stomach, my arms folded beneath my head. My shoulder is throbbing again, tension returning as though it had never left.  
  
This is an odd thing about being dead: I cannot mourn for my father. He is dead. I know that, on some level, but...  
  
I've tried to explain it to myself a million times, and haven't gotten very far. It's as though somehow, somewhere, there is another Sydney. One who never died, whose father never went on an ill-fated mission after Sloane. And that Sydney's father, that Jack, is fine right now. He's going to the office, he's plotting, he's getting things done.  
  
But that's that Sydney.  
  
I'm another Sydney. My father died six months ago, along with all of the operatives on his mission. And I'm used to that fact, because it's never been any other way.  
  
I guess it's hard to get upset about particular things. Vaughn got married. Dad got killed. Marshall got promoted, and Weiss got an incredibly bad haircut. Will got transferred to Spain for a few months, then Israel, then Japan, then back to LA. The world got meaner, the president got a few hundred thousand troops into a horrible mess in Asia, the description of my job changed. I died, and then I was reborn.  
  
If I accept this new life, then I have to accept the bad with the good. And somehow, in a remote, barely-thinkable way, my father no longer exists in my world. He lives somewhere just out of sight and out of reach, out of touch. I can sense him with everything but my senses.  
  
I'm barely aware of Sark's hand pulling the duvet up and over my shoulders, or the way he clears my hair away from his pillow, where it has left damp stripes. Once my mind starts on this loop, this guilt about not feeling guilt, it's hard for me to shake it.  
  
So I don't notice until later, after the light's been off for almost an hour, that he's fallen asleep facing in towards me, his arm curving along the mattress over my head. And that's when I finally tumble into unconsciousness, knowing that there will be no meeting in the middle, no tentative contact and clumsy kisses. But tonight, for the first time in this life, I'm sleeping in the shelter of someone who protects me.  
  
And for tonight, that's enough.  
  
* tbc 


	3. Chapter 3

He is not there when I wake.

Dredging myself from sleep is almost painful. Though I never dream anymore; shapes and colors sometimes, a flash of sound, certainly nothing coherent enough for definition. But cruelly, each day I wake there is just a moment when I remember nothing.

I wish I could stay in this millisecond longer. It could be seen as selfish – wanting to wallow in ignorance and enjoy the lack of knowing how a child must feel every morning. But that's not my motivation. I wish I could stay and study who I am in that absolute fragment of time. There is where I am pure and uncompromised, and I know now, that is the state I need to return to. It's all a tricky balance, you know. Weigh the bad and the good, cut away the parts that are dying and encourage those that bloom.

This is a natural process most of the time. You know who you are and what you want, and you strive to achieve it. But not for me.

I stretch slowly, enjoying the feel of my limbs encountering cool spots on the sheets, and abruptly realize that I cannot sense Sark anywhere. It is unnatural for me to lose track of him, a feeling that is swiftly followed by a guilty surge of responsibility. I have let down my guard, and Sark…

The crashing down of this reality spurs me on to a sort of panic. I have already yanked open a drawer before I realize that there is no point; if he has decided to leave, I won't know it. And it is just as I expected – he has left with nothing but the clothes on his back, the papers he was so feverishly studying, and the student visa I'd procured for him in the months leading up to this grand escape.

"Grand," I say aloud to the morning air. The word sits there, overly ornate and pretentious in the plain boarding house bedroom. There is nothing grand about this.

"Stupid." That sounds better.

I should not be surprised at this turn of events, but something small inside me is extinguished with the realization that I am, again, alone. I shake myself to try and stop the thought, briskly take myself into the bathroom to get a start on what will have to be a busy and delicate day.

I have grown so used to being utterly alone in the company of friends, that maybe this will prove to be easier, to be alone in a city full of strangers.

The woman at the bed and breakfast is startled when I abruptly cancel our room; when she lets slip that she saw Sark leaving early without me, I allow my lower lip to tremble and my eyes to drift down, stammering the feeble lines of a woman covering marital difficulties. She is a sweet busybody, and presses a tissue into my hand before letting me out.

I leave without looking back.

Renting a flat proves to be relatively easy; though the market is tight, the more remote areas are still slow enough for me to find a suitable space within the week. In the interim, I flit from boarding house to boarding house, never within less than a five-mile radius, never to an area I know. My hidden bank accounts stood not only the test of time, but the test of death – though the surface funds and badly-masked accounts had all been unearthed during my absence, first by my father and then by the CIA, some of the deepest and oldest sources have gone untouched.

I very carefully tap the ones I think most trustworthy, my heart pounding faster nonetheless as the teller hands over an envelope stuffed full of crisp fifty-pound notes. Even using an account I believe totally safe, I am always aware that the CIA may be playing a subtler game. But at the same time, my mind drifts to my mother, who plays a more subtle game still.

Which is why, in the series of small withdrawls I make from my most trusted account, I also make one very odd request: two separate payouts, one just under £800, one a little over £100 – both a few pence off a nice round figure. The teller looks at me oddly, and I bashfully mumble something about wanting to keep the numbers straight in my statement, as the money is for bills. She seems used to American eccentricities, and just gives a small smile as she enters the two uneven figures into the long queue of numbers, not noticing that inverting and realigning the withdrawls results in a UK mobile phone number.

It is not Sark's phone that I pull out in my new flat, a studio that looks out on a quiet street of other nameless studios. I sit on the carpet and lean against the daybed, wondering again at his motive in leaving the mobile phone on the nightstand. Perhaps because he didn't wish to wake me? No, he's too deliberate for that – had he wanted it, he would have gotten it. He certainly must have known that I would never, ever use it myself; it would have been sheer idiocy to trust him not to bug it, or use it to trace me.

Because that is now something I have to worry about. The feeling of abandonment has long since gone, and I have gone thoroughly to ground. Within moments of finding the curiously conspicuous cell phone, I had combed through the menus to ferret out any information he might have left – but the phone was not only new, it was totally blank.

Except, of course, for one number.

One outgoing call, to somewhere in Minsk. I didn't know the number, and for just one moment was possessed with such an insatiable need to dial, to listen for the voice at the other end, that I violently thrust the entire device away from me. It felt too set, too much like cheese left out for a starving mouse. I wanted so much to know who had been on that line, who had told Sark of my father's death, whether it had been Irina…

But my mind had slowly cooled, and I knew, as I know now, that it was not worth the risk at all. He could have done anything to the phone, for god's sake – perhaps the "send" button was coated with anthrax, or linked to C-4, or worse. So I scrubbed my hands, carefully wrapped the mobile in a plastic bag, and had taken a walk along the South Bank. And as the sun set behind Parliament and the great ferris wheel churned above me, I idly dropped the bag into the Thames, where it floated out to sea.

Of course, the training of a spy dies hard. It seems that the farther away that mobile sinks, the more actively the number in Minsk bobs to the surface of my thoughts.

Days pass quickly in this new life. I find myself wandering parts of London I've never had the time to look at before; most of my business was in the center of the city, or out on Canary Wharf.

I walk a very careful balance in this city. I must stay away from major centers, where there is always the risk that I will see someone I know, or knew, or will be picked up on the damn closed-circuit television that seems to have this town wired. I am lucky, in that I have no need of a job; I buy an old typewriter and set it up on my table, stack clean bound notebooks on the bookshelves, and manage to pass myself off as a reclusive writer rather successfully.

This ability to start anew is startling in its simplicity. I always knew that I might be called upon to go deep undercover when working for the CIA, and I remember how the idea both thrilled and worried me. Mostly, I worried about being cut off from everyone I cared about; a thought that makes me laugh aloud, now.

But the thrill of creating this alternate life has been tempered with something else, which I find both worrying and liberating. Without that anchor, that central core that pined for friends and family, I find myself… not caring.

My neighbors, who now know me as Nancy, are kind. The café waitress who brings me coffee every morning as I scribble away in my notebooks – she has begun chatting, ever so hesitantly, her English forcing its way past a stubborn Albanian accent. And they are becoming my anchor, I realize; I am identifying myself through the way they see me, and I am beginning to wonder if Sydney is important at all.

My mother does not call me; the CIA do not sweep in; Vaughn does not arrive on the doorstep, his brow furrowed and green eyes concerned. Every day, these things become less and less important to me, my mind releasing the painful bits, drowning the questions in an ocean of indifference. And I begin to stop playing the part, as the days turn into weeks, September sliding to November.

Which is perhaps why, coming in from the balmy autumn evening, I am caught so utterly unaware by the figure sitting casually in my flat, impassive as always, and casually leafing through one of my scrawl-filled notebooks.


End file.
